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Jun 28, 2013 at 12:01 AMJun 30, 2013 at 9:30 AM

The Lemon Orchard has a split personality. Sometimes it's a realistic novel about the plight of people trying to cross illegally from Mexico to the United States; other times, it's the frothiest of romances about an attractive woman and an even more attractive man drawn into a blissful love affair.

The Lemon Orchard has a split personality. Sometimes it’s a realistic novel about the plight of people trying to cross illegally from Mexico to the United States; other times, it’s the frothiest of romances about an attractive woman and an even more attractive man drawn into a blissful love affair.

Prolific, best-selling novelist Luanne Rice sets the novel on an estate in Malibu, Calif., with a lush lemon orchard and cliff walks overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Middle-aged Julia comes from Connecticut with her elderly dog to house-sit for her movie-star aunt and professor uncle while they’re in Ireland.

Five years earlier, Julia lost both her teenage daughter, an only child, and her husband, whom she was about to divorce, in an automobile accident. She has spent most of the time since in solitude.

At the estate, she meets Roberto — who entered the country illegally and manages the orchard.Roberto lost a child five years earlier, too: Crossing the desert, he left his 6-year-old daughter, Rosa, to rest in the shade of a rock while he looked for the ride that was supposed to pick them up. Instead, he was captured by Border Patrol officers. By the time he persuaded someone to go back to look for Rosa, she was gone.

Julia takes it upon herself to find out what has happened to the girl. She seeks the help of a since-retired border agent who was involved in Roberto’s capture.

Rice writes with sensitivity about the struggles of trying to cross the border. During her journey, Rosa, carrying a doll made for her by her great-grandmother, became severely dehydrated and delirious.

Rice educates the reader about the work done by organizations trying to reunite families and discover the identity of the dead, and about the American Indian “Shadow Wolves” who track drug smugglers along the border.

But the relationship between Julia and Roberto is such pure fluff that it calls the more serious aspects of the novel into question. It would be interesting to see a novelist explore the complications of a relationship between a Mexican laborer and a wealthy New England widow, but here, any conflicts or questions vanish, never to reappear, as soon as she gazes into his “velvet brown eyes.” The scenes during which the two make each other “dizzy” and “tremulous” under Julia’s high-thread-count sheets or in the room-sized shower are so generic that they could sub into almost any romance novel.

The Lemon Orchard is finally unsatisfying in the way romantic fantasy usually is: This relationship and the sequence of events are so radically different from normal experience that they leave the reader feeling as if the characters must be members of another, less-troubled species.

margaretquamme@hotmail.com

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